A Change of Face: Female Masks Part One
Go to Part 2
Note: Some of the art you may want to click open is up to 250K
One of the wonderful things about comics is that although they try to be realistic in many ways, they can get away with practically anything. My favorite example is the criminal genius who escaped from prison by creating a laser death ray from a light bulb. (And that was in a "serious" comic.) For our interests, this is most obvious in the realm of rubber masks. In the world of comic books, anyone of any size, or body or facial shape can put on a rubber mask and instantly impersonate anyone even with that person’s closest friends. They can talk, eat, and show every possible kind of facial expression perfectly naturally with the mask. And it just slips on and off. Sounds great, doesn’t it?
The reality is that if you have a realistic mask/prosthesis like they use in television and movies (many times which is just special effects and camera trickery), it usually isn’t completely realistic and still takes several hours to put on. If you have a slip-on rubber mask, as are available and used at Halloween and the like, it won’t show facial expressions, and anyone nearby can tell it’s a mask.
Fortunately for this column, we’re talking about comic books, which doesn’t have anything to do with reality. So female masks are wonderful and readily available and work perfectly.
We’re going to look at female masks for the next couple of months. Frequently female masks are worn by other females, and later I’ll list some of the better examples, but our focus will be on female masks worn by guys or the like.
This One’s For the Kiddies
This month we have a special treat, female masks in children’s comics. One of the lesser comic book companies, very active in the 60’s, was Harvey Comics. They specifically targeted children, and their big stars were Casper and Richie Rich. They also had several lesser lights, including Wendy the Good Little Witch, Baby Huey, Sad Sack, and Hot Stuff, the Little Devil. They were drawn in a very cartoony style, and realism or continuity weren’t particularly important. After all, they were for little kids.
We have three examples of female masks from Harvey comics and the first two come from Stumbo the Giant, a back up feature in the Hot Stuff comics. Stumbo was a typical gentle giant, a nice guy who hung out near a village and was always trying to be helpful. The novelty of the strip was that he was always using objects from Giant land or playing with mountains or clouds or other huge natural items in his interactions with the villagers. And of course, this being comic books, he had an archenemy, the evil Dr. Cesspoole. Dr. Cesspoole’s appearance was modeled on Lon Chaney’s Phantom of the Opera, and his motivation was, well, to be evil. He does say at one point that he hates giants "because of their physical superiority" (Did I mention this was a children’s comic?) About half of the Stumbo stories were about Stumbo overcoming the evil Dr. Cesspoole’s plans to harass him, which are about as logical as any that Pinky and the Brain might think up.
Remember, Size Doesn’t Matter
Our first story appears in Hot Stuff #74, (October 1966). In the story entitled, "The Mighty Flier!", Stumbo comes upon a little fairy. She thanks him for scaring away some trolls and gives him a jug of "Magic Golden Joy" which will make him "light-hearted". Suddenly he finds himself floating in the air, and he sees that the fairy was really Dr. Cesspoole in disguise. The rest of the story is cute fluff.
Stumbo uses his weightlessness to harass the evil doctor, until he destroys Cesspoole’s lab. What is particularly interesting to us is that Cesspoole uses a female mask in his disguise. After he removes his disguise we can see him holding the mask as he taunts Stumbo. Notice very carefully the two panels that show the before and after scenes. The fairy has a very low cut dress on, with cute little breasts.
But, since this is a children’s comic, when Cesspoole unmasks, suddenly his dress has a collar, buttons all the way up to the neck, and the perky breasts are nowhere to be seen. In a later panel we also see that Cesspoole, in reality, has his suit, coat and tie on under the disguise. And we think just wearing a cincher under a dress is uncomfortable!
Dr. Cesspoole’s next attempt to get in touch with his feminine side shows his versatility. In Devil Kids #26 (September 1966), in a story called, "Mighty Bashful", we see a group of older women offering Stumbo a big plate of fudge. Cesspoole, conveniently for us, removes his mask to say, "I poured my secret potion that produces extreme bashfulness into the candy!" I particularly like the scene where he is going back to his cave lab carrying his disguise, with the mask in one hand. In his other hand, he’s carrying the dress, which is completely filled out as if someone is still wearing it including the breasts.
Cesspoole’s plan is that Stumbo will be so bashful, he’ll disrupt the town and they’ll ask him to leave. Stumbo giggles at a lady pig, kicks up huge clouds of dust when he sees a "purty" statue, and when a cloud reminds him of a girl, he almost starts an earthquake. Cesspoole then decides to find out just how much trouble Stumbo can cause. "I’ll disguise myself as a pretty girl and find out! I’ll drive him nuts!" Soon a gorgeous blonde introduces herself as "Lola Lips!" Oops, Stumbo isn’t bashful anymore because he didn’t eat all of the fudge.
He forces Miss Lips to eat some, she becomes bashful and as she runs away, she loses her disguise, revealing Dr. Cesspoole! Again, we see that the evil doctor wears his clothes under his outfit, including, apparently, pants under his hose. But what’s most impressive is that before he loses his female mask, he is very clearly blushing. Now is that a lifelike mask, or what?
How Not to Pick Up Girls
In Richie Rich, Gold & Silver #11, we find Richie, our hero, taking on kidnappers in "The Fantastic Snapshots". Scientists who work for the Riches have developed a technique to turn someone into a photograph. When the photo is dropped, the person reappears. Shortly afterwards, the Estate Police Chief asks Richie to help him catch a gang of international kidnappers. His dad gives him a photo of the estate police and sends him out to act as bait.
Richie drives around for a while until he sees an attractive hitchhiker in a minidress. He invites her into his car, and she pulls a gun on him. Suddenly she pulls her mask off to reveal a young man. (The sound of a mask coming off? "Zoof!") "Hiding behind a woman’s skirts, eh?" is Richie’s response. In this very short story, Richie is taken back to the gang, where they search him, find the photo of the police, throw it down, and are immediately arrested. Nothing notable except that the female disguise was apparently thrown in to try to liven up a particularly boring story.
Next time we’ll look at how some of the superhero comics have used female masks in a more serious vein, but before we do, here’s this month’s bonus, one of the silliest uses of a female mask ever.
Bonus: But Does He Wax or Shave?
Big Bang Comics is a modern Image title that pays homage to the various stories and styles of older comics. One segment in Big Bang #14 (October 1997) imitates the cartoony style of the Captain Marvel comics of the 1940’s. Our heroine at the beauty salon sits under a new style hair dryer. Suddenly her wrists are clamped down, and the beautician informs her that "it’s really an experimental jet
engine with enough air power to blow you to bits! Hee! Hee!" "Why are you doing this?" our heroine asks, and the beautician pulls off her mask and dress to reveal that "I am not really a hairdresser, but Dr. Binana, the world’s most brilliant chimp!" Yes, a chimpanzee is able to disguise himself with one of these marvelous female masks. I think everybody should have one of those, if only we could find out just who makes them!
Till next time, remember, all copyrights belong to the original publishers, but any comments or requests, please send to me at BrittTV@aol.com.
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